Many consumers in the United States continue to acquire goods, services, utilities, housing, etc., for which they sometimes owe creditors balances especially overdue balances. A creditor may be owed money by a consumer debtor who has a checking account with money therein, but that will not necessarily translate into the debtor on his own initiative using that money to write a paper check to the creditor, put the check into a suitably addressed envelope, stamp the envelope, and mail the envelope. In some cases, the debtor may be residing, or on travel, somewhere other than where the postal mail being sent by the creditor is going, or the debtor may otherwise be out of touch with his postal mail. In other cases, the debtor's mail may be unopened, or not effectively processed. A certain population of consumers may have been hospitalized or sick, or struggling as they age with daily living tasks such as retrieving mail, opening mail, buying stamps, writing checks, etc. Some debtors may be prone to use money in their checking account to pay the particular creditor only if that creditor somehow gets their attention before they spend in a different direction, for whatever reason.
In the case of mobile phone accounts, mobile phone companies have developed electronic technology for texting customers if payment is overdue and prompting the customer to phone in and pay by credit card. But this only addresses a small fraction of situations, and there continues to be an unmet need for technology useable more generally by creditors to address overdue accounts.